Man with alcohol issues headbutted police officer

Court

Published:10:00Sunday 04 October 2015

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A Skegness man with long term alcohol issues headbutted a police officer who had been trying to help him, a court has been told.

David Stuart Sylvester, 32, of Rutland Road, had originally denied assaulting PC Garrick in Skegness on August 10 but changed his plea when he appeared before a district judge for a case management hearing.

The judge was told police officers were called to an alleyway where paramedics were treating Sylvester, who had been found there suffering from a bad head injury.

When Sylvester refused to go to hospital, the officers accepted it was his right not to go if he didn’t want to and that he would be left, but he then headbutted one of them, the court was told.

The Probation Service told the court that Sylvester had ‘serious alcohol issues which often resulted in offending’.

He was said to have a particular issue with police officers following an incident some years before in which he alleged he was assaulted by officers in the back of a police vehicle.

Sylvester told Judge Lower that he could remember nothing of the incident after waking up in hospital.

Imposing an 18-month community order, the judge told him that using his head as a weapon against an officer was a ‘very serious matter’.

“You have laboured for a long time with alcohol which you need to address,” he told him last Tuesday.

He ordered that Sylvester carry out 180 hours of unpaid work for the community and undertake rehabilitation activities and a thinking skills programme. He was also ordered to pay the officer £200 in compensation as well as £85 prosecution costs and a £150 criminal courts charge.